


Inception

by therewasagirl



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Inception AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 06:50:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7966711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therewasagirl/pseuds/therewasagirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She holds his eyes firmly and his hands tight in hers, close to her heart. Her voice steady. Calm.</p><p>“You’re waiting for a train. A train that’ll take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you. But you can’t know for sure.”  The rumble of the train rises, deafening, but she keeps talking. Determined to save them both. “Yet it doesn’t matter. Now, tell me why?”</p><p>He’s afraid, but he believes in her more than he believes in himself. His voice rises above the earth-shattering rumble.  He /believes/ in her.</p><p>“Because we’ll be together!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flavinja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flavinja/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i moved it here from the au collection cause im pretty sure this will become it's own story.

> _i_

The waves carry and toss her onto the wet said, the retreating tide pulling her backwards, until the incoming one breaks on her back and shoves her further still on the shore. Her mouth burns, her eyes are bloodshot from the salt, her skin scorched. Her short hair is plastered to her face, dark roots grown five inches, contrasting with the blonde lengths.  And she’s so cold she might have forgotten entirely what warmth was like before this, but she does not have the strength to even crawl away from the water.

A child’s joyful shout pierces the ringing in her ears and, as if the sound was the sting of her life, she looks up, eyes red and desperate. Further up the shore, a little girl in a pink dress is playing on the sand, building a castle, her sandy hair looking like a gold halo around her head. She’s not sure of the little girl is real of if the sheer strength of wanting to see her has brought her to life.

She groans, wanting, needing to call out to her, make her turn, see her sweet face. But her throat is dry and she cannot make a sound. The little girl runs away, her bell-like laughter fading, ringing in her ears. That last bit of hope keeping her awake fades.

The world goes dark.  

She doesn’t feel the barrel of a rifle poking her side, lifting her jacket to expose the gun tucked in her waistband at the small of her back. She doesn’t feel it when rough hands roll her onto her back nor hear the men speaking to each other in Chinese before they drag her away from the shore.

They shove her in the back of a jeep, and drive. Beyond the sharp rocks and rough-sanded beach, a Chinese castle of dark stone and wood rises from the cliffs as if it has been carved out of them, one level at a time.

-

The dining room is wide and square, the only furniture in it one long table in the middle, and the low-backed chairs around it. The smooth wooden floor reflects the warm golden light from the countless lanterns fixed upon the ceiling, and brings forth the beauty of the painted paper-panels separating the room from the other parts of the castle, without the harsh glare of too much brightness compromising their elegance.

The security guard that found the intruder on the shore waits dutifully as the main attendant speaks with their Lady, seated at the head of the table. He can see but the back of her black Chang'ao, and her carefully coifed white hair. Even so, he lowers his gaze.

“She was delirious.” The attendant says, voice low not to disturb her lady, who dislikes loud voices. “But she asked for you by name. And…”

The attendant turns to the security guard and nods. The man steps forward, bows.

“She was carrying nothing this.” He says as he sets the handgun he found on the intruder on the table. His lady seems more interested in her food than the weapon. “And this.”

He sets the small fixed-blade arrowhead on the table also and for the first time, the lady reacts. The hand reaching for her glass of wine stops and she looks over at the dull-edged thing. It is small - smaller even than half his pinkie. By no means a weapon. A token, perhaps.

The lady’s reaches for the arrowhead. Her hand is now wrinkled with old age, but her fingers are long and elegant when she picks it up and brings it closer to her eyes to observe it. This time it’s not age that makes her hand shake.

She puts the arrowhead down, looks in front of her at the empty spot at the other head of the table.

“Bring her here. And some food.”

-

The intruder is half carried, half walks in the room. she is seated in front of the lady of the house and when the food comes before her, she wolfs is down as if she’s been starved for countless time.

She looks like the ruins of a shipwrecks, the Lady thinks as she watches her uninvited guest carefully.  

She looks like a memory.

The Lady slides the handgun on the table towards her guest.

“Are you here to kill me?” she asks, exactly as unperturbed by the idea as she sounds. Her guest glances at her with bloodshot eyes at that, but says nothing, choosing to get back to her food instead.

The lady picks up the arrowhead next, turns it in her fingers.

“I know what _this_ is.” She says then. She holds it between her thumb and forefinger, balancing the tip of the arrowhead on the table. She spins it, and the arrowhead circles gracefully across the polished cherry-wood surface.

“I’ve seen one of those before. Many, many years ago.” She says, half a murmur as if speaking to herself, her eyes locked on the spinning arrowhead as if enchanted by it.

“It belonged to a woman I met… in a half-remembered dream.”

The arrowhead keeps spinning, not seeming to slow down its momentum. Slowly, the lady looks up waiting for her worse for wear guest to do the same.

“A woman possessed by some… radical notions.”

Across the table, dark brown eyes watered with age meet with equally dark blue ones, framed by a fierce frown. The two women look at each other across the room as if they were looking across time, and between them, history opens up. And memory.

They’d met for the first time many years ago, the Lady thinks. Or perhaps they never did and the memory is as faded as the drab grey sky outside. Never-changing.

Or perhaps it was just yesterday.

-

It was in the same dining room they met, many years ago when Shado was young and the woman in front of her better kept. They spoke over dinner and wine, and of a notion that sounded as if it had come from the pages of a work of fiction.

“What do _you_ think is the most resilient parasite?” Felicity Smoak asks as she pushes a piece of her flawlessly wavy hair behind one ear. She is lovely enough, but not beautiful in the expected way. She is remarkable on the eye in a way that is immediately apparent, but not as easily understood. Felicity Smoak’s fascination, Shado has concluded, is in the details.

In the angular silhouette her dark dress cuts, her carefully filed nails and the bright red toes peaking from her shoes. In her deep pink lips and how it all looks like it belongs.

“A bacteria? A Virus?”

Shado carefully forks some salmon, utterly unperturbed.

“An intestinal worm?”

The amusement is just there in the blonde’s tone and when Shado raises one unimpressed eyebrow at the other woman, Felicity Smoak grins.

John Diggle, who looks like he should be a security guard and not a businessman, cleans his throat and tries to save the situation.

“What miss Smoak means…”

“An idea.” Felicity Smoak offers, knowing now that she has her clients attention. “Ideas are the most resilient and contagious thing on this planet. Once an idea takes hold, it’s _impossible_ to eradicate.”

Shado tilts her head, heavy curtain of hair sliding over the silk of her sleeve and falling over one shoulder.

“Forgetting seems to be a common enough solution.” She offers.

But Felicity Smoak dismisses it with a shake of her head.

“Information can be forgotten. But an _idea_ that is fully formed, fully understood – that sticks.” Miss Smoak taps her forehead gently with one black-tipped finger. “Right in there somewhere.”

Shado brings her forked salmon back to her lips. “For someone like you to steal?”

“Yes.” John Diggle answers. “In the dream state, conscious defenses are lowered and your thoughts become vulnerable to theft. It's called extraction.”

“And you can teach me how to protect myself from this.” It’s not a question. Shado knows what they have come here for, but she is as skeptical now as she was when she was first asked for this appointment.

But she is also curious.

“Yes, we can.” Felicity Smoak says, looking at John Diggle and then back at Shado. It’s not permission, she notes. It’s something else. “We can train your subconscious to defend itself. Militarize it to fight back against even the most skilled extractor.”

 _Militarize it_ … strange choice of word, Shado thinks. A deliberate one. Felicity Smoak does not seem as someone very deliberate, despite the tailored dress she is wearing and the careful make up. But the same cannot be said for John Diggle, whose very presence is calming. A strange thing, for such big a man.

Even through such short a time as a single meal with them, Shado has come to understand that what one lacks, the other supplies. That they act as a team.

The observation satisfies her.

“And how do you propose to succeed in doing that, Miss Smoak?”

The blonde’s eyebrows twitch a bit upwards. “Because I am the most skilled extractor.”

A statement. No ego, no arrogance, just fact.

“I know the tricks and I can teach them to you, so that even when you are asleep you guard is never down.”

“Sounds like a bargain.”

“It has a few… problematic aspects.” John Diggle reminds her.

Felicity Smoak leans forward, her eyes holding Shado’s without blinking.

“To be able to help you I will need to know my way around your thoughts better than anyone. Your partner, analyst, anyone.” Her hands around, to the room they are in. “If this was a dream and you had a safe full of secrets in here, I’d need to know about and know what’s in it. For this kind of strategy to work, you would have to let me in.”

Shado’s eyes flicker on the northern wall before she allows herself a small, knowing smile. She sets the cutlery down and dabs her lips. Rises smoothly from the chair.

Both John Diggle and Felicity Smoak do the same.

“I will consider your proposal Miss Smoak, Mister Diggle. In the meantime, enjoy you evening.”

She turns to leave and one attendant slides the double doors open for her, which give way to the lavish party beyond.

The doors close softly after Shado Fei, and in the silence of the dining room, Felicity and Digg look at each other. Worry makes Jon frown.

A small tremor shakes the walls and the lanterns above them on the ceiling. John’s lips purse even tighter.

“What’s going on up there?” he murmurs, looking at the ceiling as if that will somehow help him see through it, to up above.

Up above - where Felicity, in jeans and a pink cotton blouse is asleep in the middle of the day, on a chair at the end of a steaming bath. Her chin is resting on her chest and messy bob of hair falling forward on her face. The chair is propped on a cabinet, and the bottom legs level with the rim of the bathtub. Sebastian Blood is sweating in the tropical heat, watching over her. He checks the watch on Felicity’s left wrist, making sure not to disturb the two thin yellow tubes held in place with a tape.

The seconds crawl unnaturally slow, but it’s exactly what Blood expected.

A distant explosion rumbles through the rundown apartment. Blood checks through the window the riot on the streets below.

Sebastian follows the tubes to the silver briefcase at John’s feet, who chose to fall asleep on the armchair. Another set of tubes from the briefcase go all the way under the door of the bedroom, where Shado Fei has been put to sleep on the bed. Sebastian checks her pulse, makes sure the tubes are still connected.

A more powerful explosion ripples through the room – and even further up, in a train compartment with the first rays of dark barely peaking on the horizon, Sebastian is asleep, his head rocking against the glass window as the train bumps over a rough pieces of track.

The young man sitting in front of Sebastian looks at him nervously, the manga he’d been pretending to read forgotten on his lap as he checks Sebastian’s pulse, where two yellow tubes disappear beneath his sleeve. The other two men and the blonde woman are also asleep. Todashi checks his watch, whose hands move in real time. As another train passes in the opposite direction  with a mighty whoosh, the cabin lurches. Todashi’s eyes fly to Sebastian’s sleeping face, who jerks with the movement of the train.

Below, in the filthy bathroom of the small apartment, an explosion sounds a little closer, almost seeming to shake the walls as Sebastian checks on a sleeping Felicity. The ripples of it are felt even further down, when a low tremor rocks through the Chinese castle.

Felicity and John steady themselves against the wooden rail of the wide balcony. Several tiles and a piece of masonry fall in the churning black sea beneath. The other guests wonder beneath the moon in the massive terraces of the castle as if they haven’t felt a thing.

“Shado knows. She’s playing with us.” Digg says tightly.

Felicity is not looking at him. She stares at the dark horizon in front of her.

“Doesn’t matter. I can get to it. The information is in the safe. She looked right at it when I mentioned secrets.”

Digg hums. He’s about to say something when he spots someone over Felicity’s shoulder and tenses.

“Felicity… what is _he_ doing here?”

She frowns, turns to see who John means, and then freezes. Something heavy drops on her stomach and drags it down all the way to the floor. Time goes far more slowly down here, but in that moment, between one breath and another, it stops completely for Felicity.

He’s there, in a fitted black tux and bowtie, smiling softly as he leans against the railing and looking at her with what Felicity knows is something between fondness and expectancy.

Felicity clenches her jaw, turns to John.

“Just get to your room. I’ll take care of the rest.”

John shakes his head, exasperated and worried and annoyed all at the same time. “See that you do. We’re here to work.”

It’s almost an admonition but Felicity’s already brushing by her friend of almost nine years.

She walks towards him slowly, sips at her champagne. He’s leaning on the wooden rail, looking down at the foaming waves breaking against the cliffs as if he’s considering distance. The wind whips at his unbuttoned jacket.

“If I jumped, would I survive?”

Felicity leans in too, dread pushing her diaphragm up, making it hard to breathe.

“With a clean dive, perhaps.” She hears herself say. She can’t look at the darkness forever, but she’s afraid to look into his eyes too. she dares see him only from the corner of her eyes, almost afraid to fully turn towards him.

“Oliver, what are you doing here?” she sounds as resigned as she feels, but she hides the fear.

He’s the one to turn to her then, facing her fully with a smile and warm eyes.

Yes, she’s looking now. She is.

“I thought you might be missing me.” He tells her, amused at her question. He leans towards her, an invitation she wouldn’t have had to think about, once. But she stands straight-backed and distant, now.

“You know that I am.” It’s no pain, this admission. It’s the truth. She shakes her head slowly. “But I… I can’t trust you anymore.

The warmth disappears from Oliver’s eyes, the smile melts from his lips.

“So what?”

-

Oliver sips at the champagne as he studies the paintings on the walls of Felicity’s suite.

“Looks like Digg’s taste.”

“Actually, Miss Fei is partial to the Wu school painters of the Ming Dynasty.” Felicity says distractedly as she peers through the window at the guards patrolling the castle at ground level.

She walks to Oliver and turns around wordlessly. Just as wordlessly, he unzips her dress for her, the tips of his fingers following the zipper and calling shivers that raise up every fine hair on her body with tension.

She steps away with a curt thank you, strips and puts on elastic black jeans, a cotton turtleneck and hides her bright  air beneath a hood.

He’s staring at her, walking around her to see her from every angle.

“You look beautiful.”

_I have a job to do. We’re here to work._

“Thank you. Have a seat, please.”

Oliver raises one eyebrow at that, but sits down on the closest chair gracefully. Felicity puts on black gloves and pulls out a length of rope, kneels at Oliver’s feet and ties it around one of the chair’s leg.

He leans in, elbows on his knees, face close to hers.

“Felicity…”

She can’t _not_ look up at him when he says her name like that. She can’t.

His face is so close when she does look, that his warm breath fans on her lips. His eyes are wide and so blue with sadness.

“Does Abby miss me?”

The sharp stab of longing comes to her side, expected and never not painful because of it.

She gets up slowly, cups one cheek of his in her hand, lets it slide down to smooth on the lapel of his jacket. She can’t feel him through her gloves and maybe that’s the realest thing about him.

“You can’t imagine.”

Oliver looks away, uncomfortable.

Felicity lets out the rope as she moves to the window.

“What are you doing?” He asks her, an edge to his voice. Felicity tosses the rope out.

“Just getting some fresh air.” She tugs on the rope, testing it. It holds, with Oliver sitting on it.

He always could hold her weight, no matter what.

“Stay seated Oliver. Please.”

He doesn’t say anything. His face is blank and his eyes shuttered as he looks at her. Felicity doesn’t wait. She jumps out and starts rappelling down the wall. She doesn’t look down. This is without a doubt the part she hates the most, but the window she must reach is not far. When she’s there, she takes out the glass cutter from the ouch attached to her hip, but then suddenly, the rope gives and her insides churn and try to leave her body out of her throat all at once, because she’s falling.

Above her, the empty chair slides across the floor and wedges under the window. Only that saves Felicity from becoming a human egg cracked against the sharp cliffs beneath. She jolts to an abrupt – and bruising – stop 16 feet lower than where she should have been. She looks up at her bedroom window with pursed lips and starts climbing, muttering curses.

Felicity drops silently from the window into the darkened kitchen. She pulls a pistol from her belt and as she walks she screws on a silencer onto the barrel. She slips through the shadows of the halls towards a guard stationed at the head of the main grand staircase. The guard hears something and turns but before he face her, Felicity shoots him and darts forward to catch his body, sliding to her knees and lowering the guard silently to the floor.

She slips through a small crack of the dining room doors and closes them soundlessly behind her. She walks to the northern wall, to one of the smaller paintings hanging there. Carefully she removes it, revealing the safe beneath it. Felicity spins the dial, pulls it open, grabs then single envelope from within and stuffs it into her waistband, replacing it with an identical one.

The lights come on and she jolts around, gun already aiming for the door. But it’s too late.

Shado Fei is standing there, tall and unafraid, glaring at her. And by her side, Oliver is poiting the barrel of a gun straight between Felicity’s eyes.

“The gun, Felicity.” He says calmly, just as three men drag a bloodied Diggle into the room. Oliver fluently moves his arm to point the gun at Diggle without ever looking away from Felicity.

“Please.” He adds then, softer, mocking sweetness.

Digg shakes his head, but Felicity angles the barrel up towards the ceiling and then slowly places the dun on the table, slides it along the polished cherry wood until its about halfway down its length.

“Now the envelope, Miss Smoak.” Shado Fei says, the edge of anger tinting her tone.

Felicity reaches for her waistband slowly, places the envelope on the table as slides it across. She steps back, hands raised.

“Did he tell you?” She asks, chin jerking towards Oliver. “Or have you known all along?”

“That you’re here to steal from me? Or that we are actually asleep?”

Diggle looks at Felicity, his eyes practically shining with their silent ‘I told you so’. Even at gunpoint he manages to be annoying.

“I want to know the name of your employer.” Miss Fei says, an order that expects to be obeyed.

Oliver cocks the gun he’s holding at Digg’s temple.

“No point in threatening him in a dream, Oliver.” Felicity reminds him.

His smile is very familiar, his eyes shining with a passion that she knows.

“That depends on what you’re threatening.” He tells her calmly, the way he used to explain to her how to take apart a gun and then piece it back together. Felicity feels a shiver running down her spine. “Killing him would just wake him up. But pain…”

Oliver lowers his arm and shoots Diggle in the leg. John drops with a scream that tears through Felicity and makes her flinch. Oliver looks at her, utterly empty of feeling or reaction.

“Pain is in the mind.” He explains softly as he circles Diggle, who is being pulled to his feet by the men holding him and is gritting his teeth not to let his grunts out.

“And judging by the decor we’re in your mind, aren’t we Diggle?”

He aims for John’s other leg and in that moment, with both Shado and Oliver turned away, Felicity takes her chance. She springs for the table, slidding along its smooth surface and graps the gun, shoots John between the eyes before anyone can do anything about it.

John drops and the room starts to shudder, as if in a massive earthquake.

Felicity runs for the door – just as Diggle’s eyes open and he sits straighter in the armchair he fell asleep on up above.

He yanks the tubes on his wrist free.

Sebastian jumps for him. “What are you doing, it’s too soon!”

John ignores his panic and starts fiddling with the commands on the suitcase, on the bathroom floor of the small apartment. “I know, but the dream’s collapsing. I’m trying to keep Fei under a little bit longer. We almost got it.”

John grabs the case and pushes through the door to the

bedroom- following the tubes to where they meet Shado’s wrist, who is still asleep on the pink coverlet of her own bed.

Below, in the castle, Felicity runs towards the stairs as the building bucks and heaves around her like a living being, falling apart in pieces.

Shado tries to cover her head as great chunks of the castle fall around her and her men panic. Oliver walks through the destruction calmly, picks up the envelope Felicity dropped before and hands it to Shado.

“She was close.” He says, as if to himself. “Very close.”

But when she tears through the envelope she finds only blank pages. Rage tears through her.

“Stop her!”

Among the falling ruins and the shaking ground, the guards run to catch the thief. Oliver frowns slightly, confused, and then smiles to himself when he catches sight of the blank pages.

Felicity almost falls through the ruins as the stars start to shake apart. The moment she reaches the upper floor she stops and tears through the stolen envelope, reading through the confidential information as fast as she can, memorizing it.

Until she reaches the last page – and there is information on it that has been deliberately blackened out.

 _She knew_. The thought rings in her head louder than the groaning of the palace collapsing around her.

Up above, in the dilapidated hotel room, John opens the silver case, hands flying across the controls as he glances at Shado Fei’s stirring face.

“This isn’t gonna work.” He says through gritted teeth. “Wake her up, _now_.”

Sebastian runs to the bathroom, shakes felicity by her arms but she refuses to stir. He slaps her across the face, and below, in the palace that is collapsing on itself, Felicity is smashed sideways off her feet.

On the bed, Shado’s eyes flicker open, just as Sebastian protests loudly that Felicity refuses to wake up.

John, eyes on the briefcase, connects the second tube to the mechanism.

“Give her a kick.” He says shortly.

“what?”

“Dunk her.”

Sebastian catches himself – the anxiety blanking his mind for a moment before he catches on. But when he does, he moves, grabs Felicity by the shoulders and pushes her backwards. She falls in the chair, and just as she hits the water of the tub, down under Felicity glances up from the papers in her hands to the ceiling, as water explodes through the windows and floods what’s remaining of the palace.

She is swamped by water, it spins her harshly in all directions at once and almost tears her apart.

Until she breaks the surface, hands braced on the sides of the tub in the filthy bathroom of the hotel, gasping for air.

Shado and Digg burst through the room, fighting. She knocks Sebastian down with a kick, and deflects a punch from Diggle almost in the same movement. Felicity launches herself from the bathtub directly into the fight, slamming Shado Fei from the side and into the bathroom door, giving Diggle the chance to land a  punch against her jaw and knock her out of balance enough to immobilize her.

The fight is over.

-

Felicity is dripping wet but strangely calm, as she sits on the chair opposite to Shado Fei, staring at her unflinchingly.

Digg keeps an eye on the rioting crowd outside, Sebastian on Shado.

“Not even my security knows this apartment. How did you find it?”

Felicity shrugs. “It’s very difficult for the daughter of one of China’s most influential generals – and also head of a major world corporation like yourself – to keep a love nest like this secret. Especially when there’s a married woman involved.”

Shado scoffs. “She would never.”

“And yet, here we are… with a dilemma.” She adds, eyes firm on her target.

“You got what you came for.” Shado says disdainfully.

“Not really though. The key piece of information wasn't there, was it, Miss Fei?”

Digg’s eyes move away from the widow and this time his worry is for her.

“They’re getting closer, Felicity.” He warns.

In the train’s compartment, just as the sun starts to really peek through the horizon, Todashi slips a pair of headphones over Sebastian’s ears and starts the music.

Felicity looks at Shado Fei, who seems very busy looking at the floor, the stained carpet on it amassing her attention.

“You held something back because you knew what we were up to. So the question is, why let us in at all.”

Shado Fei smiles, still as defiant now as she was when she was elegant and perfectly put together in that dining room before.

“An audition, so to speak.” She says simple.

Felicity frowns. “For what?”

“Doesn’t matter, you failed.”

The violent noises get closer, almost up the stairs. The riot is getting closer, almost to their doorstep.

“I extracted every piece of information you had in there.” Felicity protests, almost out of reflex.

Shado Fei’s smile gets a fraction wider. “Yes, but your deception was obvious.”

The first notes of Edith Piaf's " _Non, je ne regrette rien_ ," start sounding in the distend background of the room, a strange and massive collection of notes that sound more like distant horns than anything.

“I think it’s time for you to go, Miss Smoak.”

“you know very well that the cooperation that hired us won’t accept failure. We won’t last two days.” And she’ll be damned if she puts John in that kind of danger.

The slow musical horns get louder and so do the sounds from the crowd.

Felicity gets up and points the gun at Shado Fei’s kneecap.

“I’m afraid we’re gonna have to do this the more traditional way, Miss Fei. Tell me the rest of the information.”

Shado grits her teeth. Meets Felicity Smoak’s eye and sees it in them that she will pull that trigger if she has to.

 _Pain is in the mind_.

Shado looks away, ashamed but unwilling to give in so easily… She grits her teeth and curls bare toes on the carpe… and then notices something a little out of place.

It makes her laugh.

Felicity is so taken aback that she actually puts the gun down. she shares a bewildered look with Digg.

“I’ve always hated this carpet.” Shado says slowly. “It stained and frayed in such ugly ways. But very definitely made of wool.”

Felicity looks at Sebastian, who shrugs, as lost as she feels.

“But right now, my feet are standing on polyester.” Shado explains, the hint of wonder in her eyes as she looks at Felicity now, all fear gone.

Felicity glares at Sebastian fiercely.

“Which means I’m not here at all, in my little apartment.” She chuckles and it’s warm. “You have lived up to your reputation Miss Smoak. I’m still dreaming.”

Felicity looks over by the window where John was a moment ago, but he’s not there anymore. He woke up, and the rest of them are about to as well. That or about to be torn apart by an angry mob who’s going to pour through the door any moment.

Shado gets on her feet, her eyes smiling as if she’s looking at a friend.

“A dream within a dream. I’m impressed.”

She sounds it. Felicity is utterly at loss, but also afraid and disappointed and angry. They failed. Failure was a non option and they failed.

Fuck.

She glances at her watch. The music is getting deafening now, and so is the crowd.

Shado approaches Felicity slowly.

“But since it’s my dream, should we play by my rules?”

“We would, if it were.” Sebastian says, shoulders slumped.

Shado turns to him.

“But it so happens that we’re not.” Felicity ads. By the time Shado has turned back to look at her, she’s vanished. The door explodes open and countless people pour through, to grab at Sebastian.

Who shivers awake on his seat in the train.

“Asshole.” Digg says immediately, before Sebastian has even twitched in his seat. “How could you get the carpet wrong?”

“It wasn’t my fault!”

Digg is good and angry now. “You’re the _architect_!”

“I didn’t know she was gonna rub her fucking feet on it!”

Felicity is already up and moving. She throws a wad of cash at Todashi and gets up to retrieve her backpack.

“Lets go.”

“And you!” Digg turns to her. “What the hell was that?”

“I had it under control.” Felicity mutters. Digg scoffs.

“I’d hate to see out of control.”

“There’s not time for this!” She snaps, but then bites her lip trying to reign her temper, her panic. Deep breath. “I’m getting off at Kyoto.”

“Why, he’s not gonna check every compartment.”

Felicity looks away from him. “I don’t like trains.”

Digg frowns but says nothing. He regulates the dials on the silver case to keep Shado under for a minute more. Then rips the tubes of her wrist, rolls them up and slams the shiver case shut.

Todashi opens the door and they all exit and take different directions.

A minute later, Shado Fei wakes up and there is only a kid with her in the cabin, reading a comic. She looks at her wrist and sees a faint mark there. It makes her smile.

Very rarely does she listen to rumor, but this time, they proved to be true.

-

A few hours after she’s booked a room, after she’s had a shower and changed clothes, she starts feeling restless. The walls confine her and the city seems to flicker every time she blinks. She can’t stop fidgeting and not even coding can calm her.

She gets up from the bed and paces, sits on the small coffee table and pulls out the arrowhead from her pocket. She holds it between her finger and her thumb and lets it spin on the table. Pulls out a handgun and checks to see if it’s loaded as the arrowhead spins on. She studies that motion with intent, bringing the gun close to her head. The soft scrapping of the tip of the arrowhead against the wood grows louder and louder until it’s a the hiss of a freight train in her ears. Until she can’t hear anything else but the loud rush of blood on her fingertips and that screeching sound… pounding against the side of her head.

The arrowhead’s spinning slows. It tips to one side and falls.

The sound of the train stops with it, just like that.

Felicity takes a deep breath, only then realizing she’d been holding it.

She phone’s ringing jolts her into awareness. She drops the gun and grabs the phone, answers it already knowing who is on the other line.

“Yes, hello.”

There’s a small pause on the other side of the line.

“Hi, mom.”

Felicity closes her eyes, her throat suddenly a closed fist.

“Hey baby.”

She can almost see her daughter, exactly as she used to be the last time she laid eyes on her. Playing in the sun out in the yard, her pink dress with which little embroidered flowers, her hair threaded with gold because of the sun.

“How are you, honey?”

Abby hesitates. “I’m okay I guess.”

No four year old should ever sound so unsure, Felicity thinks and she has to bit her lip to keep her tears at bay.

“Okay? Just okay? I think you can do better than that.”

“I think I know how to code in javascript now.” Abbie tries, and though it sounds more like a question than a statement, felicity will take it.

“Yeah? That’s so great! Java is a good programming language to start with, though it’s a bit difficult. I’m so proud of you for learning it baby.”

“Yeah, I had fun learning it.”

Felicity smiles. That sounds a bit more genuine. A bit like there might be a smile in there, at the corner of her mouth maybe. “Yeah, I bet you did.”

“I had brunch with aunt Thea too. she said to say hello and that she misses on you shopping trips.”

“Oh I miss her too.” She misses everything and everyone and getting back to all that she lost is what keeps her going even when determination and will fails her. “Did you have fun.”

“Yeah. Aunt Thea’s always fun.”

“She is. Tell her hello for me, ok.”

“Kay.” The silence goes on for a moment longer.  “I miss you.” Her daughter whispers from the other side of the world.

“I miss you too, baby.”

“Grandma says you’re never coming home.”

Felicity closes her eyes. Tries not to let her anger show.

“Could you put grandma on the phone for me baby?”

Her daughter waits a beat.

“She’s shaking her head.”

Felicity’s hand tightens on the phone. She wishes she could throw it at the wall, at Moira Queen’s head. She wishes she could break the whole world in two.

And then she lets it go.

“I love you more than life, Abby.”

“So why can’t you just be here. I’ll be good, I promise, just come back.”

She can tell tears are just around the corner, and Felicity’s aren’t that far behind either. She sits down heavily on the sofa, elbows on her knees and almost curling around the phone, her heart trying to climb up her throat.

“Oh baby, this is not your fault. I need you to remember that okay.”

Abbie says nothing and that’s the first sign that her daughter doesn’t believe her.

“I know I’ve been away a long time, but I’m doing everything I can to get back to you.

“So do better.”

Ah, there’s anger too.

“I will.” Felicity says, weighting in and meaning it. “I will. I promise. Do you believe me?”

“Yeah.” It takes a while and it’s wobbly, but its there.

 _She won’t be four forever. She’ll stop waiting for you eventually, just like you stopped waiting for your own father_.

The though tears at her like a rusted blade.

“Mom… is dad with you?”

Felicity feels like the room is collapsing. Her brilliant daughter can code at four years old, but there are some things she doesn’t understand. Permanent absence is something her kid struggles with.

Seems to run in the family.

How could she make the difference, anyway? Neither parent is there, and though she hasn’t seen her father in almost a year, her mother keeps promising her she’ll come back. If hope is to say alive in a four year old, it must be all inclusive.

“No, baby.” She clears her throat. “No, we talked about this remember? Daddy’s gone.”

“I…” Abbie sniffs and there’s a rustle on the phone. “I have to go now.” Abigail says and Felicity has to bite back a sigh.

“Okay. I’ll send you some presents tomorrow – check your account.”

“I will.”

“Be good for-“

The line drops and Felicity flinches as if she’s been hit in the face. She stares at the phone like it robbed her personally and it’s all she can do to put it back on the table unharmed. It’s not the fault of some poor electronic that Moira Queen despises her.

But instead on dwelling on that she downs her drink.

The knock on the door makes her think better of pouring herself another one. Felicity grabs the arrowhead, the gun, movies to the door…

It’s John.

“Our ride is here.” He tells her.

Felicity nods, turns around and wipes her hands down her face before she grabs her bad. She can feels John’s eyes on her back.

“Felicity… are you okay?”

She tenses, but tries to immediately let it go. “Yeah. Why?”

“Down in the dream, with Oliver showing up like that…”

Felicity winces. Looks away. “Yeah. Im sorry about your leg.”

“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” John say softly. It sounds like a question but its not. He’s already made up his mind.

“One apology is all you’re getting Digg.” She turns and adds a smile to it. “And a Big Belly, if really insist. Where’s Sebastian?”

The change of topic and the look in her eyes are enough to let John know to drop it.

“Hasn’t shown. Wanna wait”

“No.” they walk out and Felicity closes the door behind herself. “We were supposed to deliver Fei’s expansion plans to Stellmore International two  hours ago. By now they’ll know we’ve failed. It’s time to disappear.”

Digg nods, as if he’s already thought through it.They walk to the elevator.

“Where will you go?”

Felicity shrugs. “Buenos Aires. I can lie low there. Maybe sniff out a job when things quiet down. You?”

Digg hesitates, regrets ever asking. Then tells the truth.

“Stateside.”

Felicity looks away, her smile wistful. “Of course. Give my love to Lyla.”

“I will.”

He wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her for a hug. Felicity sighs and lets it happen, curls into him a bit, just for a moment.

The elevator reaches the roof, and it ends.

“Thank you.” Felicity says softly as the door start sliding open.

“Anytime.”

The helicopter sits, rotors spinning and kicking up a stiff wind. As Felicity and Digg reach the door, it slides open. She has one leg on leather-padded interior when she freezes.

Sebastian, complete with a bloody nose, sits, slumped against the window and across from him, Shado Fei smiles and nods politely at her.

“He sold you out.” she explains calmly. “Though to come to me and bargain for his life.”

One of the met serving as Shado Fei’s bodyguards offers Felicity a gun.

“You may have the satisfaction.”

Felicity frowns. Shakes her head.

“That’s not how I deal with things.”

Fei raises her eyebrows but then shrugs. “Suit yourself. Would you work with him again?”

“No.” there’s no doubt about that.

Sebastian gets pulled out of the chopper. Fei monitions Felicity and Diggle inside. The chopper rises and Felicity watches Sebastian being dragged off the roof.

“What will you do to him?”

“Nothing at all. Though I can’t speak for Stellmore International.”

“And what do you want from us?”

Shado Fei turns to them, and her face is unreadable, all pleasantness gone.

“Inception.”


	2. ii

> _ii_

Digg’s eyes widen in surprise. Felicity’s face remains carefully blank.

Oliver used to say she has no poker face, but spending a year on the run from the Federal Government of the United States while stealing people’s ideas from their dreams, gives one a certain brand of caginess that is hard to shake.

“Is it possible?” Fei asks, looking from on to the other.

“Of course not.” John says immediately. Obviously.

“If you can steal an idea form someone’s mind, why can’t you plan one there instead?

Diggle sighs and Felicity can tell from the very tone of his voice that it’s all he can do not to roll his eyes. John’s never been one for theoretical speculation.

“Ok here’s me planting an idea. I tell you, ‘don’t think about elephants.’ What are you thinking about?"

Miss Fei blinks, smiles. “Elephants.”

“Right. But it’s not your idea, because you know I _gave_ it to you. The subject’s mind can always trace the genesis of the idea. True inspiration is _impossible_ to fake.”

She can’t help it. She can’t listen to John going on and on about something that sounds like excuses, flimsy and ugly to her ears. She can’t.

“That’s not true.” Felicity murmurs as she looks out the window, all the heaviness of almost two years worth of experience in her rough voice.

Digg turns to her, astounded. Shado Fei smiles.

“Can you do it?”

“I won’t do it.”

“In exchange I will offer you the information you were paid to steal from me for Stellmore International.”

Felicity shakes her head, looks at Diggle who is staring at her without blinking.

“Are you offering us a choice, because we can find our own ways of squaring things with Stellmore.”

Shado Fei raises her chin only a fraction. “Yes, you do have a choice.”

She didn’t have to think about it.

“The I chose to leave, Miss Fei.”

The helicopter lands down on an airfield, next to the private jet that Felicity had hacked her way into securing.

John gets out and extends a hand for Felicity to take so that she can hop from the Chopper too.

“You may tell the crew where you wish to go. They will file the plan en route.” Shado Fei says.

Felicity nods, surprised at the other woman’s graciousness and relieved to be leaving her presence. But just as her back is turned, she hears her name being called.

“There is one more thing I could offer you.” Felicity shakes her head, already walking away in her mind, if not in her body.

“How would you like to go home, Miss Smoak? To your daughter. Your mother?”

She looks up, going cold and still at the low bait. Those dark blue eyes staring back at her in that moment, Shado thinks, are the same as they were in her dream, in her little apartment in Mumbai, over the barrel of a handgun. As cold now as they were then, when Shado had been convinced Felicity Smoak would shoot her.

“You can’t fix that.” Felicity says, her voice barely heard over the rumble of the helices turning. “Nobody can.”

“Just like inception, yes?”

Her feet are frozen, stuck on the ground. John puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes to remind her of reality.

“Felicity, come on.”

He’s already walking away.

But Felicity can’t. She can’t do that. She can’t walk away, not ever from the most abhorrent sell, the lowest low or the craziest shadow of hope. She promised. There is a little girl at the other side of the globe who needs her mother and she promised she would do better.

She takes three fast steps towards the chopper, leans in.

“How complex is the idea?” she grits out.

“Simple enough.”

Felicity’s lips thin in anger. “No idea is simple when you need to plan it in someone else’s mind.”

“I need the near of Merlyn Global to decide to break up his father’s empire once he comes into his inheritance. Against his own self interest.”

Felicity looks away, her mind working furiously, exploding into a thousand possibilities and plans. She feels ashamed and conflicted, but there is only one thing driving her and that is going home to her family. Nothing can stand above that. Not even herself.

“Felicity, we should walk away from this.” Digg urges.

They should. But she can’t.

She shakes her head, shifts on her feet, tightens her hand on the handle of her small bag.

“If I were to do it. If I _could_ do it… there is no way you can possibly deliver on your end of this bargain. There are people involved in this that not even you can contend with.”

“You mean ARGUS, right?”

Felicity sucked in a sharp breath, took a step back, and then an aggressive one forward. She would have throwing herself right at Shado Fei then and tried to scratch her pretty eyes out if Digg hadn’t caught her by the rm and firmly held her in place.

“Did Waller put you up to this? _Did she_?”

Shado Fei seemed unperturbed. “Not entirely. But no matter how… unpleasant the woman herself, she and I have a common interest here.”

Felicity scoffs, lips curled back in disgust. “Do I look like an idiot, Miss Fei?”

Shado Fei raises her eyebrows, utterly innocently. “No on the contrary. I think you are a woman of rare intellect.”

“The you must be insane to think I would ever consider trusting the Wall with _anything_ anymore.” Felicity spits out, venomous as a snake.

“It is Amanda Waller’s duty to make sure her country is safe. And she prioritized the needs of national security over your life, as one in her position should.” Shado Fei leaned forward, utterly unflinching in the face of Felicity’s scorching glare. “Now that the circumstances demand her to reconsider, perhaps it would be wise, Felicity Smoak, to exploit this to your advantage, instead of indulging in what cannot be changed.”

Felicity shakes her head, looks at Digg, whose face is completely shuttered, fiddles with the arrowhead in her pocket.

“Lets assume, for the sake of hypothesis, that I forget to turn on my bran and actually say yes to this.” Felicity fixed her eyes on the other woman’s face. “How do I know she will deliver this time.”

“I offer myself as your guarantee.”

“How do I know _you’ll_ keep your word?”

There had been no route she hadn’t tried, no road she had not beaten. She had hacked her way into the backward of god and the devil himself and found no kind of evidence that could possibly help her case.

“You don’t.” Shado Fei says, confirming Felicity’s fears. “But I will. I am not Amanda Waller, Miss Smoak. But in the end, it is as you said in our shared dream. You’ll just have to take a leap of faith with me. Or chose not to, and become on old woman filled with regret, waiting to die alone.”

Felicity straightened. The deliberate choice of words chafes at her, but she dismisses it. She squares her jaw. Nods tightly, just barely.

Shado Fei smiles. “Assemble your team, Miss Smoak. And chose your associates more wisely, this time.”

Felicity walks away. She will live to regret this. Or not. At this point, she has nothing left to lose. Old ghosts laugh at her. ‘ _you have everything left to lose. Everything left to you._ ’ She shoves them back down where they belong. She has the living to think about.

-

It’s hard to tell if John is angry or worried as he picks at his steak unhappily. Felicity thinks it’s a mix of the two, but she can’t really be sure which outweighs the other at the moment.

“I know how badly you want to go home.”

“No, you don’t.” Felicity sais, and then bites her lip. She didn’t mean to sounds that sharp.

Diggle doesn’t take it personally. “You’re right I don’t. And whatever I could imagine, it would probably be worse. But this cannot be done, Felicity.”

“It can. You just have to go deep enough.”

Diggle puts the fork down a little more forcefully than necessary. “You don’t _know_ that. And tangling yourself up with Waller again is a sure way to get dead.”

“Oh and you think this life is some… precious thing to me?” She snaps, hands balled into fists. “That I would exchange the possibility to fix things for a few more years of… of what? Living as a fugitive, never to see my daughter again as long as Moira Queen shall live, until she finally _hates_ me as much as her grandmother does? Living in other people’s head and in dreams. What kind of life _is_ this, Diggle?”

John sits back and sighs deeply, wiping a hand down his face. Felicity takes a breath and looks back out the window, embarrassed by her outburst.

“You better than anyone should know.” John starts again, softer this time. “You were there – you know how obsessed Waller was with this. They tried for years and _always_ failed.”

“That’s because they were going about it the wrong way.” Felicity turns to look at him. “I’ve done it before.”

She can tell John is taken aback. He stills in his seat completely.

“To whom?”

Felicity turns back to staring out the window, hands crossed over her chest, protective. 

“Did it work?”

The clouds are awash with the rays of the setting sun, bathed in gold and orange.

“Yes.”

Yes it did.

Diggle sighs. “Why are we going to Paris, then?”

“Because we need a new architect, and I know where to find one.”


	3. iii

She doesn’t miss the halls of l’Ecole D’Architecture, she thinks them too stuffy and dark for her tastes, but Oliver had loved this place. The years he spent here working on his degree had been some of the happiest of his life, she thinks. Or maybe it had been just getting out of the military and leaving that life behind, starting a new one for himself. With her. Doing something he loved to do.

No she doesn’t miss this place… but she has some wonderful memories from within these walls. Which is why her step is quick and she doesn’t linger anywhere, fixed to her objective.

He’s there in the auditorium, just as she expected. And though she’d known that the other girl would be there with him, her chest tightens at the sight of her.

“You never did like your office.”

Slade Wilson and Thea Queen look up, startled out of their work. When he sees her, Slade straightens in his chair.

“I can barely fit in that brook cupboard.” Slade says, distracted as Felicity descends the stairs to him.

Thea steps forward. “Is it safe for you to be here?”

Felicity shrugs. “Extradition between France and the U.S. is a bureaucratic nightmare.”

Slade scoffs. “Oh, I think Moira Queen might find it in her to make everything work for you.”

“She would.”

Felicity is close enough to Thea now to be within arm’s length and waits for whatever the younger woman is prepared to hand out.

In the end, it’s a gentle hug that comes her way and a slow breath makes it out of Felicity’s mouth before she can gather herself and hug Thea back.

“How are you?”

Felicity has no answer for that. She steps back, digs in her bag and pulls out a small package, hands it to Thea.

“Could you give this to Abby please, when you get back?”

Thea nods.

“It’s gonna take a little more than the occasional computer game to make that girl remember she still has a mother.”

“I know that. I’m trying.” She looks back to Thea. “I was wondering if you could convince your mom to take her on vacations somewhere… somewhere I could meet her.”

Thea shakes her head. “What makes you think she would listen to me?”

Felicity feels disarmed. “She always did before.”

Thea’s eyes are wide and sad, though her hands curl into fists. “She blames me as much as she blames you, felicity.” She says curtly and starts packing up her notes, shoving them in her bag.

Felicity tries to stomp down her irritation. “My daughter needs me. Doesn’t she understand that?”

“She does. We all do.” Thea steps closer to her, takes her hand. “Come back and face the music, Felicity. You can’t run forever.”

“I was never going to. I’m working on a solution.”

Thea frowns.

“Then why are you here?” Slade finally asks, somehow managing to look down at her even seated on his chair. He better than anyone knows that Felicity never goes anywhere or does anything to endanger herself these days, unless she needs something.

“I think I found a way home. But I need some help.” Felicity say simply.

“You’re here to corrupt one of my brightest and best, aren’t you.”

Felicity rolls her eyes. “You know the deal, Slade. They get decide for themselves.”

“Ah, but is it an independent decision really?”

“Even so, it’s their so make. If you have someone good enough.”

“So you want me to let someone else follow you into your fantasy. After what happened to the last person who did so.”

“Hey!” Thea protests sharply but Slade doesn’t bother. Felicity tenses, her face shutters down. she would have left way sooner, before, but there are some freedoms she can’t afford anymore. Pride is a luxury.

But the last years spent on the run and alone have taught her how to cut back, where once she would have forgiven.

“That’s not what you used to say.” She says softly, eyes intent. “Not what you told Oliver either, remember? You told him in the real world, he’d be building attic conversions and gas stations. You said that if we mastered the dream-share, we’d have a whole new way of creating. You told him it would free him.”

Thea wipes at her face; Slade looks away, sad and ashamed, the silence between them heavy with grief.

“I’m sorry, Felicity. I was wrong.”

He was. It didn’t change anything now, though, did it.

And then remembers that though she has no idea how to forgive herself, she truly wishes she would learn. That someone would grant her that gift, take that weight off her shoulders. She wants it as much as she wants never to part with that weight.

Who is she without her sins?

She doesn’t really want forgiveness. But she can offer it to those that long for it.

“You weren’t wrong. Your vision was one of pure creativity.” The words are heavy, her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth. “It’s where we took it that was wrong.

“Besides, you know the rules, Slade. They don’t actually come into the dream, they just design the levels and teach them to the dreamers.”

Slade sighs. “Why don’t you do it? You weren’t so bad, once.”

Felicity crosses her arms in front of herself. “Oliver was better.”

“Oliver was the best. But you were quite surprisingly creative too, though a bit minimalistic.”

“I’m a cyber-security expert and a software designer. Taking some of your classes – which I spent mostly staring at Oliver, actually – doesn’t make me an architect.” Felicity insists.

“Did made you a pretty stellar thief though.” Thea adds with a small smile. Felicity rolls her eyes.

“You know the requirements of the layers better than anyone could. Design them yourself.”

There is no way out of this without the truth. Felicity looks down, breathes, steadies her footing.

“Oliver won’t let me.” She murmurs.

She doesn’t have to look up to know that Slade and Thea are giving her equally appalled looks. She feels Thea’s small hand on her shoulder.

“Come back to reality, Felicity. Please.”

“Reality?” Felicity shakes her head. “My reality is my daughter waiting for me. And you better believe I’ll do everything I can to get back to her.”

She looks back at Slade. “I wouldn’t be standing here if there was any other way. But I need an architect who’s as good as Oliver was.”

Slade looks at her, tilts his head. “I’ve got someone better.”

-

They wait as the students file out of the class.

“Ah there she is. Sara!”

A blonde girl, who couldn’t be more than 21 and who’s holding a couple of books that look too big for her alone, turns and stares at them with a pair of the brightest blue eyes Felicity has ever seen.

“Professor.” She says as she steps closer, and Felicity feels herself being sized up by those quick eyes.

“I’d like to introduce you to Miss Smoak.” Slade says. Sara offers her hand.

“Nice to meet you.”

“If you have a few moments, Miss Smoak has a job offer to discuss with you.”

Her eyes liven up. “What, like a work placement.”

Felicity smiles. “Not exactly.”

-

Sara Lance leans against the parapet of the roof as she devours her sandwich in big bites. Felicity pulls out a pad of graph paper and a pen and offers them to her.

“What am I supposed to do with that?” Sara asks, chewing on her sandwich.

“A test.”

“Aren’t you gonna tell me anything about the job first?”

“I need to know you can do it, before I explain it.”

“Sounds fishy to me.”

She’s starting to like this girl. “Because it is.”

Sara’s full eyebrows rise in surprise and Felicity watches her self-preservation fight with her curiosity. In the end, the second wins.

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“You have two minutes to draw a maze that takes one minute to solve.”

-

It takes her two tries to finally take the pad from Felicity’s hands irritably, flip it to the blank cardboard on the back. Felicity smiles when she sees Sara drawing circles, creating a maze based on concentric rings.

This time when Sara Lance hands the pad back to felicity, she’s a touch defiant. And this time, it takes Felicity one minute and thirteen seconds to solve it.

-

John checks the address again to be sure. He pushes the sliding door open and enters the open floor. Looks around at the dusty place and nods. The abandoned building has three unused floors that are waiting to be restructured, but for the next three months they are going to be unused, and stay empty.

He drags a few lawn chairs in the middle of the room,, erects a table and lays out several silver cases, unpacking them, laying out the tubes and setting up the mechanism.

Good enough.

-

The little café Felicity chose is on a fairly less populated street of Paris. A neutral corner tourists don’t often wonder into. Felicity picked a small outdoor table that gave her a line of sight into both streets conversing on the little square the café faced.

“They say we only use a fraction of the true potential of our brains… but they're talking about when we're awake. While we dream, the mind performs wonders.

“Such as?”

Felicity tilts her head, considers it. “Contrary to what professor Wilson says, I’m not much of an architect, but I do know about coding. When you create a new program, there are layers to it, and most of the time you have to consciously create every layer and detail, but sometimes, imagination just… takes over, and

“And it’s like discovering it.” Sara fills in with a smile.

“Exactly. Genuine inspiration.” Felicity leans forward. “In a dream, you mind does this continuously. It creates and perceives the world simultaneously, and so flawlessly that you’re not aware you’re creating. That’s why e can short-circuit the process-”

“How?”

“By taking over the creating part. And this is where you come in. The architect builds the world, and the subject we bring in populates it with their subconscious.”

“And it feels real?”

Felicity smiles and Sara Lance’s doubt. “Dreams feel real while we’re in them.”

“It’s impossible.”

“Ok, let me ask you this. You never remember the beginning of your dreams, do you? You just turn up in the middle of what's going on.”

Lance shrugs. “I guess.”

“So… how did we end up here, in this café?”

“What are you talking about, we just came from…” Sara trails off, looks around, confused. 

“Do you know where we are?” Felicity asks again, calmly.

Lance starts breathing faster. “Oh my god, we’re dreaming…”

“Stay calm, this is your first lesson in dream-sharing, remember.”  

Sara looks around, eyes open wide and reeling.

“It looks so real…”

“It is while we’re here.”

The waiter comes over and sets the coffee down in front of Felicity, and then tries to do the same for Sara, but trips and spills some of the hot liquid on her hand.

Sara yelps, and hisses.

The look she gives Felicity is almost betrayed.

“It will _feel_ real too.” Felicity warns. “So watch yourself.”

Sara starts smiling and running her hands over the table, the cup. She tastes the coffee, grimaces. All on her own prompting she gets up and starts walking around. Felicity follows her with a wistful smile, hands in the pockets of her jeans.

“This is _amazing_.” Lance says under her breath, taking in the world around her. “Why have I never heard of this before?”

“Dream-sharing is a military training program. It’s not strictly top secret, but it’s not out in the market either.”

Sara looks at her over her shoulder. “A training program?”

“So the soldiers could shoot stab and kill each other and then wake up. Yeah.”

Lance winces. “Cold.”

“You have no idea.” Felicity murmurs to herself.

“Ok, so the architects had to build the world, but what about you?”

“I created the quantum processor that sustains the machine, and wrote a good part of the program that runs it.”

Sara laughs and turns around, walks backwards so that she can look at Felicity in the face.

“You’re not like, a real life genius, are you?”

“I don’t really like that word. And all methods of evaluation of intelligence are pretty subjective anyway so it’s not really a…”

Sara Lance purses her lips, raises her eyebrows at her and Felicity huffs.

“Yeah, technically, I’m what you would call a genius.”

“Cool.” And then she turns around and keeps walking down the crowded street. Somewhere in the pit of Felicity’s stomach sometime pulls. There is something about Sara that reminds her of Oliver, his flippancy when he felt in the mood for it. His smiles…

Felicity closes her eyes, breathes deep. Takes a look at her watch.

Any second now.

The next breath she takes smells of dust and stale air, and not the Parisian streets in the spring. She sits up, watches Sara Lance as she takes gulping breaths and stares around, disoriented.

“Hey, I was…”

“Time was up.” Diggle says as he comes closer and hands Sara a glass of water.

“How about we see what kind of trouble you can get into in another five minutes?”

Sara Lance’s smile is slow and mischievous. Felicity’s heart clenches, but she doesn’t look away.

“Oh, I dunno. My father always thought it was better not to ask me those kind of questions.”

Felicity huffs, shares an amused look with Digg.

“Well, show me, then.”

-

She does. They walk down the street of Sara’s dream, and Felicity looks around, taking everything in. she got everything down very neatly. Forgot the bookshop in the corner, but other than that everything was where it should be.

The dream was somewhat brighter and the colors more vivid than it should be for this weather and the season, but Felicity reckoned that was part of Sara Lance’s personality bleeding into her way of building her own world, and not something that the kid could actively control.

Oliver used to like bright open spaces too.

“Who are all these people.” Sara asks, as she passes random strangers by.

“They’re projections of my subconscious.”

“Yours? So they would be super smart like you too?”

Felicity considers it. “I suppose so, yes.”

“So if I stop to talk to any one of them, I’d literally be talking to your subconscious.”

Felicity nods. “That’s right. that is actually one way to steal the secrets – the subjects own mind gives them to you.”

Sara descends down some steps, and as she does the parapets grow out of the ground, of stone and curling iron.

Sara laughs, sliding her hands down the railing as she descends the stairs. “I love the real sense of things.” She confesses, delighted. “Real weight, you know. Fantastic. What other ways of stealing are there?”

“Architecture. We build a bank vault or a jail, something secure, and the subject's mind will fill it with information he's trying to protect.”

“And then you break in and steal it.”

Felicity tilts her head. “Well… yeah.”

She walks, and builds as she goes and Felicity watches on, honestly mesmerized by the speed and sheer delight with which Sara picks it all up and moulds the world around her. She hasn’t seen someone dreaming this way in a long time.

But the more she changes things, the more and more people start staring at her.

Finally, Sara notices.

“What’s with the creepy staring?”

“Because you’re changing things. My subconscious feels someone else is creating this world. The more you change things, the quicker the projections with converge on you.”

“Converge? Is that a mathematical term?”

“They sense the foreign nature of the dreamer and will eventually attack you.”

Sara turns to her, hair flying. “They’ll attack me?”

Felicity nods.

“Wow, okay.”

Sara leads Felicity towards the river, and as she approaches, steps emerge from the flagstone. She leads them up onto a small jetty, concentrates, pillars emerge and a bridge  starts to telescope out from the jetty.

They step onto it as it grows.

Felicity walks slower, just behind Sara, who can’t seem to get enough.

“This is beautiful, Sara, but I’m telling you, if you keep changing things…”

She doesn’t get to finish the sentence before a woman walking down the bridge bumps into Sara hard.

“Jeez. Mind telling your subconscious to take it easy?”

Felicity sighs. “It’s my subconscious, remember I can’t control it.”

Sara Lance doesn’t seem to be someone who learns by advice, so Felicity lets her be, and looks up to stare at the arched stone and iron pillars that she created out of nothingness.

She might not be an architect, but she knows beautiful creation when she sees it.

“Lovely…”

And then she pauses mid-step, thinking.

Remembering.

Remembering when she was here last, right under the arched stoneways. Remembers leaning far out of the parapet, and Oliver behind her, his arms around her and his chest flush to her back so that she only had to turn her head a little to kiss him.

Remembers turning into his arms and putting her arms around his chest and pressing her face to his shoulder. Opening her eyes and watching the sun turn the scruff along his cheeks burnished gold and red. And how it felt when he’d hide his face in her neck, soft lips and scratchy kisses.

Felicity rubs her sweaty hands on her jeans and walks fast ahead to catch up with Sara.

“I know this bridge. This place is real, isn’t it. You didn’t imagine it, you remembered it.”

“Yeah, I cross it every day to get to the college.”

_God damn it!_

“ _Never_ recreate places from your memory, _always_ imagine new places.”

“Well, you gotta draw from stuff you know, right?”

“Wrong. Use pieces. Street lamps, a type of brick knock, never whole areas.” Felicity’s getting tenser by the moment and some of the people around her echo her attitude.

Sara stops. Considers her with a frown. “Why not?”

“Because building dreams out of your own memories is the surest way to lose your grip on what's real and what's not.”

Sara Lance’s eyes narrow on her, the sharp look of them irritatingly perceptive.

“Is that what happened to you?”

Felicity says nothing. He stands there, staring at Sara. And the people around them stop and look at her too, hostile this time.

Felciity doesn’t notice, but Sara does.

“This isn’t about me.”

“Is that why you need me to build your dreams?” Sara challenges.

Felicity’s lips purse in anger but before she can say anything, a passerby grabs Sara’s shoulder and shoves her.

“Hey!”

Felicity reacts, shoves the man away. “Leave her alone.”

But more of the crowd join in, pulling at Sara, who screams. Felicity feels her heartbeat rising and tries to fight people off, but she gets pushed away as the crowd surrounds Sara. Felicity is surprised to see the blonde knock at least three people off their feet before she is immobilized, but then anger start leaving its place to dread and Sara’s eyes widen with it.

“Felicity, what’s going on! Felicity!”

Felicity grits her teeth.

“Sara, stay calm.” But even as she says it she knows what’s gonna happen.

She can see him. He’s walking purposefully towards Sara, who’s trapped and helpless and screaming for Felicity. Dread rises in her so fast she could throw up. Felicity fights, but she’s trapped too.

Oliver’s face is set, his strides long, fast.

Sara looks from Oliver to Felicity, eyes wide and scared.

“Felicity, wake me up.”

As he walks towards her, Oliver pulls a large knife from the inside of his leather jacket.

Felicity sucks in a sharp breath, knocks a man down and dives for them, doubling her efforts to get between them.

“Oliver! Oliver, _don’t_!”

“Wake me up, Felicity. John!”

Sara screams as Oliver lunges at her with the knife-

And she wakes up breathing hard, cold sweat making her shiver as she sits up gasping for air and on the verge of tears.

John is by her side in a moment.

“It’s okay. Breathe.”

Sara looks down, hair curtaining her face.

“Why… why couldn’t I wake up?” she asks, sniffing and trying to breathe though a sob as quietly as possible.

“Because the only way to wake from a dream when there’s still some time left on the programmer is to die.”

On the chair next to her Felicity jerks awake and sits up, pulling the tubes from her wrist in jerky movements.

“She’ll need a totem.” Felicity says as she works.

“What?”

John doesn’t know if Sara means to know what a totem is, or how the fuck Felicity Smoak can talk about it as if the kid didn’t just get die in her dream, but he decides to go with the safer route.

“A totem. Some kind of personal icon. A small           object that you can always have with you, and that no one else knows.”

Felicity gets up without a word and heads for the bathroom. Sara Lance’s furious eyes follow her, glaring daggers.

“That’s some subconscious you got there, Smoak. He’s a real charmer!”

Diggle suddenly understands.

“Ah, I see you’ve met mister Queen?”

Sara’s eyes turned to him, resident anger making her confusion even more impatient. “What?”

“Her husband.”

Sara’s eyes go so wide for a moment John thinks they might actually fall out of their sockets. “They’re married?”

He nods as she gently pulls out the syringes from Sara’s elbow and withdraws the tubes.

“So, a totem.” He begins again, as calm as before. You need something small, potentially heavy.”

Sara wipes at her eyes and then her nose without caring. She focuses on the moment to get over the shock of being stabbed to death in the dream.

“Like a coin?”

Digg shakes his head. “Too common. You need something that has a weight or movement that only you know.”

“What’s yours?”

“A loaded die.”

They conversation reaches Felicity in the bathroom as she takes out the arrowhead from her pocket and spins it on top of the marble counter.

John’s voice reaches her, but Felicity has eyes only for the spinning arrowhead, everything else fading.

“Nope, can’t let you handle it. It defeats the purpose. No one else can know the weight and balance of it.”

“Why?”

Felicity studies its movements without blinking, holding her breath as it  slows down. She breathes only once it slows and topples down to the side.

“So that when you examine your totem, you know beyond a doubt that you’re not in someone else’s dream.”

Felicity grabs the small arrowhead as if she were reaching for a lifeline, and curls her palm around it so hard that she can feel the metal digging its impression on the soft parts of her skin.

In the other room, Sara shakes her head.

“That’s not an issue for me.”

Digg raises his eyebrows. “No?”

Sara rises to her feet and grabs her jacket.

“Mister Diggle, maybe you can’t see what’s going on or maybe you don’t want to, but Felicity has some… serious issues that she’s tried to bury down there. And I’m not about to _open my mind_ to someone like that.”

She turns around and leaves without another word. Felicity watches her go from the bathroom door without saying a word.

“She’s going to come back.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. I’ve never seen anyone pick it up that fast, not even… One reality won’t be enough for her anymore.” She looks away from the door Sara walked out of and in John’s eyes. “When she comes back, have her start building mazes.”

“Where are you going?”

Felicity sighs. “I have got to talk to Nyssa.”

Diggle groans and turns on his heels. “Nyssa al GHul. Oliver, she’s in Mombasa. That’s Stellmore International’s back yard.”

“Necessary risk.”

“There are plenty of thieves.” Digg reminds her. But Felicity’s made up her mind on this one.

“We don’t just need a thief, we need a forger. And Nyssa is the best at what she does.”


End file.
